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WINE TALK; The Battle for Purity on Long Island

THE grapes have barely begun to grow in Long Island's vineyards this year. Even so, there are ample signs that the whole young industry is in a state of vigorous ferment. Not in the wine cellars, but in the winery offices, around dinner tables and over lunch in local restaurants. At issue is what constitutes Long Island wine.

Just last month, the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms approved a petition to make Long Island a single viticultural area, from the New York City line to the eastern tip of Suffolk County. Superficially, this sounds like a routine bureaucratic recognition of something that already exists. Not quite. True, it allows any bonded winery in the area to call what it makes Long Island wine. But more important, it bars the wineries from using the Long Island name on wine from anywhere else.

However, that does not preclude the dilution of these wines with grapes from as far away as the Finger Lakes or even California -- a practice that is little known, but legal, and may become more common as demand for wine from the region continues to increase.

The industry's remarkable success in recent years has stretched it to the limit. The 25 wineries on Long Island make about 300,000 gallons of wine annually, about the same as a single medium-size winery in California. That is hardly enough to supply a growing market as well as the hordes of tourists who fill the tasting rooms on weekends.

For some popular wineries, the temptation to bring in grapes or wine from elsewhere and call it Long Island wine can be hard to resist. What's more, the acceptability of using wine trucked in from outside the region might attract the wrong kind of investors to a business in which some of the best-known wineries have changed hands in recent years. To some Long Island producers, nothing less than the East End's reputation as a premium American wine region is at stake: they are alarmed at the prospect of attracting people more interested in tourism than in making good wine.

Richard Olsen-Harbich, winemaker for the new Raphael winery in Peconic, and Karen Meredith, a Southold vineyard owner, are among those producers. Last year they petitioned the bureau to designate the new region. Mr. Olsen-Harbich has been making wine professionally on Long Island for 20 years.

The Island already has two wine regions, or American Viticultural Areas, as they are officially known: the North Fork and the Hamptons. The new area, which goes into effect on July 16, includes both of them (though they will not disappear), along with the parts of Nassau and Suffolk Counties they don't cover.

By law, an A.V.A. designation on a wine label means that 85 percent of the grapes used to make that wine came from that viticultural area. Under the bureau's regulations, the remaining 15 percent can come from any other officially designated region in the country.

New York's regulations are stricter. Under the State Farm Winery Act, which covers most Long Island wineries, the extra 15 percent must come from within New York. If a Long Island winery uses more than 15 percent, none of the three Long Island A.V.A. names or appellations can be used. ''New York State'' can be used, or no appellation at all.

''The official Long Island appellation now eliminates the use of Long Island as a fanciful name,'' said Bob Pellegrini, the owner of Pellegrini Vineyards and Winery in Cutchogue. ''Names like Long Island White or Long Island Chardonnay can no longer be used as brand or product names. The words 'Long Island' now can only be used as an appellation.''

A number of Long Island wineries, like Lenz, Paumanok and Raphael, use only their own grapes, allowing them to be designated ''estate wineries.''

The Farm Winery Law, passed in 1976, for the first time allowed the construction of small wineries in New York making up to 50,000 gallons a year. It also permitted them to have tasting rooms and to sell their wines at retail seven days a week. Since the law's purpose was to encourage the development of a wine industry in the state, the farm wineries could use only New York State grapes, their own and purchased. The maximum annual production was expanded to 150,000 gallons in 1990, said James Trezise, the president of the New York Wine and Grape Foundation.

The State Liquor Authority licenses all New York wineries, but the federal bureau keeps track of how much outside wine they use and where it comes from. ''The wineries have to keep records of all their purchased wine,'' Mr. Trezise said. ''The B.A.T.F. does spot checks to make sure they are in compliance.''

So-called commercial wineries -- those producing more than 150,000 gallons a year -- can buy grapes or wine from anywhere in the world. And even under the new regulations, up to 100 percent of the grapes in their wines can come from outside the region; they just can't label it Long Island wine. The commercial wineries' licensing fees are higher than for the farm wineries, and they don't have the retail sale privileges of the smaller producers. Pindar, a commercial winery and the largest on Long Island, has used California riesling, according to its owner, Dr. Herodotus Damianos; as a commercial winery, it may do so.

Many Long Island wineries supplement their own production with wine or grapes from the Finger Lakes region. As long as they keep the amount to 15 percent or less, the consumer may not know that his Long Island wine comes partly from somewhere around Hammondsport. But the trade works both ways, Mr. Trezise said. ''Finger Lakes wineries will buy Long Island grapes when they can,'' he said, noting that Glenora, on Seneca Lake, often used merlot from Long Island.

''Hermann Wiemer has used Long Island sauvignon blanc,'' he said. Mr. Wiemer, whose winery is also on Seneca Lake, is known principally for his riesling. Riesling thrives in the harsher upstate climate, where merlot and sauvignon blanc do not.

It remains to be seen if the Long Island wineries that are major visitor attractions can remain so if their tasting rooms are forced to rely on relatively scarce Long Island wine. It could mean raising prices to keep the Long Island name on the bottle, or charging for tastings.

California wineries reluctantly began to charge for tasting-room wine a decade ago, mostly as a way to control crowds. Now some charge as much as $10 a glass for their better wines. While this may thin the crowds, it hasn't driven them away.

California's reputation as a producer of high-quality wines remains intact, of course. Small, elite wineries that are closed to the public coexist quite peacefully with big popular ones. With the new regulations in effect, I see no reason why tourist-friendly wineries on Long Island should affect the reputation of the smaller elite producers. The tourists are a fact of life and, who knows, there may be quite a few elitists among them.